


The Sun Beyond

by LittleRaven



Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-12 00:33:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19217989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: She pulsed, energy to match the Earth’s atmosphere.





	The Sun Beyond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



Up in space, the view was different. Vers had been waiting for that view; it was part of what she’d been training for, and seeing it gave her proof that it was happening. She was getting off Hala, to the stars the Kree had a duty to protect. She‘d see them up close and protect them better than anyone else could. 

It didn’t require much more thought than that. Sometimes she wondered. Couldn’t help thinking, what with the reminder of the Kree blood and everything else she had been given, where her blood had come from. 

She wasn’t supposed to, but that didn’t matter. Vers would prove her abilities and that would be enough. No more questioning, no more chiding from Yon-Rogg about her control. She could do as she pleased, investigate or not, her past a curiosity, an interesting flavor added to her present. As soon as she got the chance. 

Her past wasn’t meant to matter, she’d been told, by people who seemed to worry it might; Vers could show how that meant it wouldn’t. 

The Skrull waiting in the worlds beyond Hala would be her means. 

 

She was doing pretty well for herself, Vers thought. C-53 was fine to get around in, and even more so once she realized blending in would be best. It was a world that didn’t seem to know it was C-53: not a bit of recognition when it came to her uniform, innocent as to the Skrull threat, happy to keep going about its own life as long neither she nor the Skrulls made their presence apparent—Fury and his agents excepted. 

This made her something like a Skrull herself. She took a moment to handle where her mental process had gone. Yes, she was having to adopt the same method. With different intentions. She dismissed the thought. It let her go about her life, which was good because she was starting to get a hint as to what that life had been. The Skrull had inadvertently given her a lead, and she would take it.

It could only help. What they were looking for, and what she wanted to find, were on the same track; her own feelings were a mere bonus to the Kree effort. Extra incentive. Emotion, Vers decided, was not always a weakness, and she would be the first in Kree culture to prove this. 

Their unwitting enemy had given her the chance, and she would seize it. 

 

There was a family. No other phrase came to mind: that was definitely a family. The woman, Maria, looked as if the past had just returned. It should have done for Vers too. But being known for the first time was like if she had never known herself at all. It was someone’s past she was seeing, and that someone would not have liked Vers. Carol, the woman in that audio, would’ve shot her without hesitation. How was this a history she could claim? 

Someone else’s puzzle was staring her in the face and Vers didn’t like being asked to solve it.

Naturally, the Skrull wanted her to do it anyway. For his own good. The thought curdled inside her. Here she was, knowing she had done good, knowing she was bettering herself, and here was taking that away from her. 

She could make it stop. She wanted to. She could admit the tangle her instincts had taken her down, tell Yon-Rogg whenever he managed to get his ass here. That thought curdled too. 

Weak. Of course, he’d call her coming to him a sign of improvement. She felt the truth of it. She wanted an escape. He might give her absolution. Make it easy. 

And she would be unworthy—unworthy of the Kree who had taken her, and unworthy of the people who had depended on her before, of the people who depended on her now. She would be hiding, letting everything pass her by, and good or bad, the things which happened as a result would be her responsibility for allowing them. A coward. Vers would’ve despised her. She had already realized what Carol would’ve thought. 

So. Vers had two choices, two real ones, and only one of them would let her be the person she’d claimed to be, at least for now. 

Carol’s mission had been pretty straightforward. Still was. Set everything aside. Help people escape extinction. Help Fury protect his planet too. Help Monica’s world. Maria’s. 

Vers would be Carol and prove Vers was right about her instincts. 

Talos would benefit, and that was fine. It didn’t mean anything bad. 

 

Maria went with her, the first time she’d been in space, and that could’ve been true for both of them.

She wasn’t sure how to feel about Talos being right. He’d gotten back his family, the remainder of his people. She’d been fighting to exterminate them. 

Maybe in this case, her feelings didn’t matter. People would be safe. They would be better off than they had been. Vers had wanted to be a strong protector. Carol was protecting, now, where Vers had not. 

The Skrulls would be safe. 

When she followed Yon-Rogg out of the ship into space, she forgot she’d ever needed help to breathe in it. 

 

She pulsed, energy to match the Earth’s atmosphere—fleetingly, she wondered how it would pulse through Hala’s. She might never learn. It would be for the best if she never needed to. 

Thought set aside, she ripped through the air like Vers had always wanted to do, up and off the ground at last. Like Carol had wanted. 

Conscious of Maria flying below her, she threw Ronan’s missiles back out of her planet. 

 

The Skrull wouldn’t be safe here. Neither would the Earth. She had a duty to this planet, if she wanted to claim it. She had a duty to the person who’d started her off on this, Mar-Vell, and the Carol she had been. 

She hadn’t been there for the family she’d had on it. This was the only way to be there for them now. She would go, and then maybe say they were truly hers. 

In space again, bright as the Earth beneath her, she remembered looking at Maria in her planet’s glow, free of gravity. 

Then she went.


End file.
